Deeplinks Blog posts about File Sharing

As we've discussed previously, Choruss is the name of the new entity, backed by three major record labels, that is interested in granting blanket licenses to universities (and someday residential ISPs) to authorize the music swapping (on P2P and otherwise) that has become a fact of digital life. As a big fan of voluntary collective licensing, EFF is following the development of Choruss closely and with great hopes. At the same time, there are many devils in the details.

Fortunately, the public debates about Choruss (which is still a work in progress) have begun, with those on both sides contributing valuable thoughts about the advantages and disadvantages of Choruss (or any system like Choruss):

The battle to control online music has taken a particularly outrageous turn. As if private censorship, fines, intimidation and blacklisting weren't enough, now the Department of Justice — for the first time we're aware of — is threatening to throw a man in jail for noncommercial music-sharing.1

Whether you're following a New Zealander on Twitter, or have friended a Kiwi on Facebook, you will not have missed Net users from that country protesting Section 92A in NZ's new Copyright Act. Thousands are turning their sites and their icons black to mourn the coming enforcement of the provision, which passed last year over the protests of ISPs and technology experts and activists.

The language of New Zealand's new copyright law is flawed for the country's Net users; but how it is being interpreted is also bad news for other countries, whose lawmakers might be influenced by the extreme position NZ's politicians and ISPs have wandered into.

While there were rumors today that Comcast and AT&T might be entering into an agreement with the RIAA in the United States, it was in Ireland where the recording industry made its latest "three strikes" subscriber termination deal with the telecom industry -- using the courts and the threat of mass Internet filtering obligations as the inducement.

The Irish Recorded Music Industry (IRMA), the local recording industry organization, and Irish internet service provider Eircom announced a settlement this morning, ending a lawsuit in which IRMA was demanding that the ISP pro-actively discriminate content on their networks.